A comfortable and restful sleep can significantly affect a person's health and mood. However, most mattresses available for sale at local bedding establishments or via the Internet are not suitable for providing the comfort and support conducive for the desired sleep. This is because most mattresses are not tailored to take into account the physical characteristics of the users and the different load or pressure points caused by their sleeping positions.
Some mattress manufacturers have attempted to provide mattress designs that take into account desired support levels and pressure points. One such mattress design disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,467,058 B2, to Dennis M. Boyd, and issued on December 2008, is provided via a method and system for selecting a mattress. This method and system is provided for diagnosing a subject's desired level of support and comfort. In accordance with the method, a diagnostic mattress with an adjustable support structure is provided. A subject is positioned on the diagnostic mattress. The adjustable support structure of the diagnostic mattress is adjusted in accordance with a desired level of support as determined by positioning the subject on the diagnostic mattress. The subject's desired support level is correlated to a support characteristic of a mattress with a fixed support structure thereby allowing the subject to select a mattress with a fixed support structure characteristic generally equal to the subject's desired support level as determined from the diagnostic mattress. A system employing this method is also disclosed. U.S. Pat. No. 7,467,058 B2 is incorporated herein by reference for at least the purpose of giving context to the present invention.
Another system for providing customized mattresses is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,990,425 B2 to W. Eric Hinshaw, which is directed to an automatic mattress selection system. A person shopping for a mattress is helped to select a physiologically suitable mattress by a system which uses a questionnaire to elicit important information from the person and a test bed to derive weight distribution information of the person. The answers to the questionnaire combined with the bed test results are processed automatically to generate a recommendation of which available mattress system is most suitable for the person. U.S. Pat. No. 6,990,425 B2 is incorporated herein by reference for at least the purpose of giving context to the present invention.
However, the prior systems and methods require that the customer or user lie on a test bed to determine a suitable mattress. Therefore, there exists a need for a system and method for enabling a customer to select a bedding mattress without being required to lie on a test bed.